The Treatment of Minimal Brain Dysfunction

Abstract

The syndrome of minimal brain dysfunction in children is a rather controversial one. There are those who feel that it is the most common of all psychiatric disorders of childhood and that it is the most common cause of referrals to child psychiatric clinics in the United States. On the other hand, there are those who feel that minimal brain dysfunction is a “scientific myth.” Part of the reason for the controversy of opinion is the wide variety of terms that have been used to describe children with ostensibly the same disorder. These terms include: minimal brain dysfunction, minimal cerebral dysfunction, brain damage syndrome, minimal brain damage, hyperactivity, hyperkinesis, hyperactive child syndrome, the hyperkinetic syndrome, and more recently the attentional deficit disorder syndrome with and without hyperactivity. This diversity of terminology has had both theoretical and practical implications. These terms have been used in widely different ways by different people. Thus children with the same disorder have been described by different terms, while children with different disorders have been described by the same terms. Thus research findings from different centers cannot readily be compared, and treatment studies of all types are difficult to compare if fundamentally different disorders are being treated but are being given the same name.